se71

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February 19, 2007

Hidden Tracks on CDs Hell

I am now getting royally pissed off with this stupid practice. Artists seem to think it's cool and clever to waste my time and disk space with several minutes of silence on a CD. Latest culprits are Klaxons who couldn't even manage 3 minutes for the final track of their latest album (no link - do not buy this CD), and yet padded out the CD with 15 minutesof complete silence, and then put a couple of minutes of annoying synth sounds. Don't these people know that some people might be listening on portable music players whilst running, or in rooms far away from the audio equipment, so that clicking to the next track is non-trivial. I spent 1/3 of my last run in silence thinking the album was over and not able to easily get at my iPod throgh the layers of clothing I was wearing; you've really annoyed me Klaxons.

Am I supposed to think this is fantasticly wonderful. Don't these bozos know that this kind of thing was boring ten years ago. It's a 23Mb MP3 file, and it's just not funny.

So, if I had time, here's what I'd do. Search my MP3 folders for all final tracks on a CD that are >10Mb. Some of the resultant files will be legitimate, but a lot will have these stupid silences. 'Name and shame' the artists as publicly as I can, and try and make them and anyone else stop doing it in future. Who's with me?

Update:
It's not just hidden tracks that are annoying me, it's bonus tracks in general too. If I get a 'Special Edition' CD (#) with bonus tracks, I expect the bonus to be something worth having.

Pink, on her latest album "I'm not Dead" has an untitled bonus track which is a Vietnam War lament written by her father years ago. They sing a duet. I't appalling.

Similarly, and untitled track on Snow Patrol's "Eyes Open" CD is just some muffled talking from a child (I think it's the lead singer's daughter), nearly 4 minutes of it. Total waste of space.

Paulo Nuttini on his pretty good "These Streets" debut, falls into the same trap. Track 10, Alloway Grove, is 14:12 minutes long, but in the middle there is about 3 minutes silence, and then a bonus track which is just an acoustic, and inferior, reworking of one of the others.

And these are just albums I've bought in the last few months - it seems to be getting worse.

(#)
note to the publisher 'Universal' - I'm not fooled - every single one of your artist's CDs has a special sticker on it.

Posted by se71 at February 19, 2007 12:07 PM

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